


Smile

by Decepticonsensual



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-01
Updated: 2013-09-01
Packaged: 2017-12-25 07:58:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/950645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Decepticonsensual/pseuds/Decepticonsensual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two smiles, millions of years apart - and both of them changed Chromedome's life.</p>
<p>Based on a one-word prompt from Shafau - "Prowl/Chromedome, 'smile'".</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smile

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shafau](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shafau/gifts).



The first time Prowl smiled at him, Chromedome knew he was going to be in _so much trouble._

It certainly didn’t happen at their first meeting.  Chromedome hadn’t known what to expect when Flatfoot, in his typical offhanded fashion, had slipped a second datapad on top of the case file he’d just handed Chromedome and said, “By the way, I’ve decided it’s time you had another partner.  There’s his bio, comm. link, the works.  Dismissed.” 

Prowl was already at the crime scene, crouched over a shattered corpse, when Chromedome arrived.  It gave Chromedome the opportunity to study him unobtrusively for a moment.  Oh, this one was _young._   Everything about him screamed it, from the clean, slim frame – no scuffs or scars, very little in the way of upgrades or built-in weapons – to the almost military stiffness of his back struts.  Not that Chromedome himself was much older, but he’d already racked up what felt like a lifetime’s experience on the streets, dealing with everything from addicts and petty thieves to murder.  That must have been why Flatfoot had given him this rookie to take care of.  Briefly, Chromedome puffed up with pride.  Yes, he could do that – take the kid under his wing, show him the ropes, make –

“You’re 1.3 minutes late.”

He started.  Prowl still hadn’t turned around, but his head was tilted just slightly now, one bright blue optic sizing up Chromedome from behind the sweep of a doorwing.  Chromedome made the mistake of laughing indulgently.

It turned out not to be a joke.

 

 

 ***

 

“Unlucky, mech.”  Backburner’s hearty shoulder-slap nearly sent Chromedome sprawling, but it did, oddly enough, make him feel a little better.  “Just slaggin’ unlucky.”  The veteran mechaforensics officer heaved his massive frame onto the bar stool next to Chromedome, and blew out a heavy ventilation.

Chromedome nodded in bitter agreement.  “You don’t know the half of it.  Hey, Backburner, do you know how many mechaforensics regulations govern the gathering and registration of an energon sample?”  He leaned his forehead against the bar with a faint whimper.  “’ _Cause now I do._ ”

A much softer pat on his other shoulder, combined with the clink of glass on glass, caused Chromedome to lift his head.  Nightbeat had returned with a new bottle, and was pouring a generous amount into Chromedome’s glass.  “Was just asking a couple of the guys about it.  They say this kid’s been through three partners already.”

“How is that even _possible_?” 

“They didn’t last.  Every one of them ended up begging Flatfoot for a transfer.”

Backburner perked up at that, but Chromedome shook his head.  “I tried that.”  He tilted back on his stool, studying the cracked panels that made up the ceiling of Maccadam’s Not-So-New-Any-More Oil House.  “He gave me a load of slag about duty and the importance of officers being able to learn from each other.”

“In other words,” Nightbeat said, smirking – but not unkindly – over the rim of his glass, “he’s decided he’s sick of bouncing this Prowl character all around the department, so now he’s your problem.”

Chromedome grabbed his refilled glass like a lifeline.  They drank in silence for a moment.

“Twenty-seven,” Chromedome said hollowly.  “There are twenty-seven regulations governing energon samples.”

Backburner put a soothing arm around him.

 

 

 ***

 

If Chromedome had harboured any hopes that his new partner would loosen up with time, the first year or so of working together killed them stone dead.  Prowl was relentless –he was bristling with Ideas and possessed of a fierce discipline that Chromedome almost could have admired, if Prowl hadn’t kept trying to enforce it on him as well.

Evenings at Maccadam’s provided a much-needed outlet – Chromedome could knock a couple back, vent to his friends, and be pretty much guaranteed not to run into Prowl for the duration of the night.  It was just enough of a release that it kept the hostility between them at manageable levels.  For a while.

And then came the big smuggling case.  It was one of the most frustrating of Chromedome’s entire career:  they _knew_ that a certain businessmech was doing a roaring side trade in circuit boosters, coming into the Dead End from offworld manufacturing plants, and yet no one had managed to uncover enough evidence for even a search warrant.  That was how Chromedome and Prowl ended up closeted away together for days on end, going over every scrap of paperwork associated with the mech’s enterprises and looking for even the tiniest abnormality to investigate. 

“We’ve read every single one of these datapads,” Chromedome griped, flopping on his back on the floor of what used to be Interview Room 1 (and now appeared to be a scale model of Iacon’s jagged skyline, built entirely out of neat stacks of datapads).  “Twice.  Do you know what the Rungian definition of insanity is, Prowl?”

“Is it constantly interrupting both your own work and your partner’s with pointless complaints?”

“My _point_ is that we could be out there, re-interviewing the employees, seeing if the spacedock workers have remembered anything new –”

Prowl’s face was impassive, but one doorwing twitched irritably.  “Retracing our steps isn’t going to do anything except make you _feel_ like you’re being useful.”

“And all of this is accomplishing what, exactly?”  Chromedome was sitting up now, gesturing expansively to their miniature datapad metropolis.

“There must be –”

“There is NOTHING here!  All right?  This guy followed every rule to the letter, ’cause he knew we’d be after him.  He even paid every shanix of the damned port taxes on his cargo.  You just don’t want to admit –”

“Chromedome –”

“Face it, he outsmarted you!”

“No, _Chromedome_.”  Prowl’s voice was suddenly soft and intense. 

And then Chromedome realised it, too.

They both dove for the same datapad; Prowl knew exactly where it was in the stack, so he got there first, half-lunging, half-crawling right over Chromedome in his enthusiasm.  Chromedome yelped at the unexpected lapful of mechaforensics officer, but before he could protest, Prowl had snagged the one datapad among hundreds and sat up, bearing his prize aloft.

“He _did_ pay the port taxes,” he was murmuring, scrolling down rapidly.  “But the taxes are based on the mass of the cargo –”

“While the customs form is based on the number of crates you’re carrying,” Chromedome chipped in, growing more excited.  “Which means that we can compare them, find out how much each crate weighed, and –”

Prowl was already doing the calculations, his optics dimming as he retreated into his mind.  “It’s too heavy.  It would be impossible for a cargo of –” a quick glance at the forms – “personal fibreoptics to weigh half as much as these crates did.”

“Vector Sigma.”  Chromedome vented hard.  “Impossible… unless half the crates were crammed full of circuit boosters instead.  This is _it_ , Prowl!  This gets us that fragging warrant!”

It took Chromedome, in his excitement, a moment to realise that he’d grabbed his partner by the shoulders and was holding him close, so close that he could feel the warmth seeping through Prowl’s delicate plating, the crackle of his EM field…

… And that Prowl was smiling.

It wasn’t wide or bright or especially charming.  It was close-lipped and a tiny bit crooked.  But it was a smile just for Chromedome – a small, secret thing between them.

It was the sexiest damned thing Chromedome had ever seen.

 

 

***

 

And that was precisely the problem.  There was something heady and seductive about being one of the few mechs in the universe, maybe the only one, with whom Prowl shared his hidden thoughts.  Long after, “You’re X minutes late,” became an odd running gag between them – long after Backburner and Nightbeat and the others had grown used to seeing Chromedome come into Maccadam’s and, instead of heading to the bar to moan, take up a corner booth and order two drinks in anticipation – that smile still worked on him, getting under his plating as nothing else could.  Prowl would look at him, whether it was across a crime scene or from the other side of the berth, and his lips would curve up in that subtle, conspiratorial way they did for no one else.  And Chromedome would momentarily feel on top of the world – the one person who was in on Prowl’s secrets.

Until the day he suddenly wasn’t.

 

 

 ***

 

_Afterwards_ was such a strange, awful thing.

In less than a day, Chromedome’s whole world had changed.  The Institute was real.  The Decepticons were being set up by the Senate.  Practically everyone around him – from Flatfoot to the highest authorities on Cybertron – was complicit in it.  The Matrix was a fake.  Chromedome himself had been part of a plot to steal it; he’d seen a high-ranking Senator dragged away in front of his eyes to be mutilated and Primus knew what else; he’d barely escaped an explosion with his life.

And Chromedome’s partner – the one person in all of this he’d _known_ he could trust – had abandoned him without a word.

And yet, when all of it was over, Chromedome still had to walk home to the same apartment.  Had to key the code into the door, just as he did every night.  The place looked, smelled, felt as it always did; Chromedome’s empty energon cube from that morning was still sitting on the counter.  It was almost offensive, all these ordinary things blithely continuing as if nothing had happened.

Just like so many times before, Prowl was sitting at the table, waiting for him.

But some ordinary things could not be allowed to remain the same.

Chromedome folded his arms and simply stared at him.  Prowl got to his feet; his optics were wide and nervous, but there was a determined set to his mouth that only made Chromedome’s anger burn colder.

“I saw the news report.  The explosion at Rodion HQ.”  Prowl started to move towards Chromedome, but apparently thought better of it; his doorwings stiffened, his frame practically drawn up to attention.  “What really happened?”

Chromedome himself was almost surprised at the flat venom in his own voice.  “Oh, so _now_ you believe there might be more to the story than the official sources say.  Isn’t that sweet of you.”

Prowl’s optics narrowed.  “You know, if you’d been a little more sceptical to begin with, you wouldn’t have –”

“Don’t,” Chromedome growled.  “Don’t you fraggin’ dare.  You want to know what happened?  _We lost._   The Senate have their ammunition against the Decepticons, and they took Shockwave, and maybe things would have been different if we’d had, I dunno, a _certified tactical genius_ along –”  He broke off, covering his visor with one hand.  Somehow, saying it all out loud made it real.  It was as if something had snapped inside him, and all the anger that had been keeping him going – at the Senate, at the Institute, and, most of all, at Prowl – was bleeding out like fuel.  Without it, Chromedome felt exhausted, and empty.  “Just… just get out, Prowl.”

Even before he lifted his head, he could sense the rage coming off Prowl in waves; but for some reason, Prowl held himself in check.  Instead of snapping back, he marched over to the door and wrenched it open, and stopped.  After a long moment, he said haltingly, “Chromedome, I…”  Chromedome glanced up, and saw that Prowl wasn’t quite looking at him; instead, he was just barely peering back over his shoulder, the way he’d done when they first met.  “I’m glad you’re all right.”

And then he was gone, the door closing surprisingly gently behind him.

_I’m not all right,_ Chromedome didn’t get the chance to say.

 

 ***

 

“Do you still think about him?”

Rewind doesn’t have to specify who “him” is.  It’s one of the things that initially drew him and Chromedome together, after all – they both have ghosts.  True, Prowl is a distant shadow, while Dominus Ambus is more like an absent light, but the experience is close enough.

Chromedome leans back, balancing on one hand.  “Some.  He crops up in the dreams every once in a while.”

“But not tonight.”

“No, not tonight.”  Tonight’s particular nocturnal delight was a screaming nightmare about being melted in a vat of acid from his feet up – a souvenir of an old mechaforensics case.  Chromedome vividly remembers diving into the still-sparking eye sockets of a corpse that basically ended below the shoulders; the acrid smell of corroded metal was so thick he could almost touch it.

The nightmares are why Rewind is here, a warm, reassuring little weight tucked against his side.  Their new quarters at Autobot HQ are right next to each other, and Rewind’s sharp audios – not that surprising for someone whose function is to observe and record – picked up Chromedome’s screaming right through the bulkhead.  Chromedome was embarrassed when Rewind woke him; the thought of his new best friend catching him like that made him cringe.  But Rewind has been remarkably kind about the whole thing.  They’ve been awake for hours now, sipping heated midgrade, talking or not talking, and just letting Rewind’s strong, clear EM field pulse soothingly into Chromedome’s crackling, thready one.

Chromedome lifts the cube to his lips again.  They’ve both retracted their masks to drink.  It’s the first time he’s shown his face in front of Rewind, but Chromedome finds to his surprise that he doesn’t mind.  (Anyway, other masked bots get it; it’s the ones who don’t wear masks who make a big deal out of them, and become perversely fascinated with trying to catch a glimpse of what’s underneath.)

Besides, it feels too late at night for secrets.

“You know, the worst ones… the worst dreams aren’t actually the ones where I think it’s me, dying.  Those are bad, sure.  Tonight was bad.  But there are some dreams…”  Chromedome sits staring at his hands for a moment, feeling Rewind nestle closer.  “A lot of people die with unfinished business.  And for the ones who die in battle, it tends to be even worse.  There’s such an awful… urgency.  The one thing burned into their last memories is that they _have_ to take that signal post down, or they _have_ to go save their friend.  It’s tough for that not to bleed over and get in your head.  It’s not just the pain – it’s the franticness...”  He sighs.  “And it’s worse, because I already know that I – that they failed.”

Rewind is quiet for an unusually long time.  Chromedome wonders if he’s thinking of his own unfinished business, his desperate quest to find Dominus.

What Rewind doesn’t know – what Chromedome doesn’t intend to tell him, unless it actually yields results – is that Chromedome sent a message last week.  A data packet, encrypted using old, familiar codes, and sent straight over the heads of his superior officers – and _their_ superior officers – to land right on the desk of the Autobot army’s second-in-command.  Inside was a mocked-up mechaforensics case file, tagged for Officer Prowl’s personal attention:  the disappearance of one Dominus Ambus.

Chromedome got a one-word answer back:  _Why?_

He mulled over his response for ages.  He wasn’t about to explain what Dominus meant to Rewind, much less what Rewind was starting to mean to Chromedome.  “Because you still owe me,” however true, was unlikely to get Prowl’s cooperation in tracking Dominus down.  “Because I need you,” burned too much to say.

Finally, he sent a reply that read, “Because I’m asking.”

He hasn’t heard back again.  It would be easy to assume that Prowl deleted the file and is ignoring him… but somehow, Chromedome doesn’t think that’s the case.  In that silence, he senses that he’s caught Prowl’s attention.

Maybe nothing will come of it.  But it was worth a try.  Some things are important.

He’s startled out of his thoughts by a soft touch on his knee.  Rewind’s visor is bright and intent, watching him.

“You’re a good mech, Domey.  You know that?  This stuff wouldn’t get to you in the same way if you weren’t.”

Chromedome stares at him, dimly recognising how stupid he must look, his mask off and his lips parted as he turns the words over.  It’s such a simple statement, and yet he’s never thought about it like that before.  The feeling that comes with it is just as unfamiliar – a sudden, skittish hope, underneath all the layers of other people’s guilt and pain.  It sets his spark beating wildly.

And that’s when Rewind stands up on the berth and kisses him.

It’s chaste, that first kiss, Rewind’s warm little mouth pressed to the corner of Chromedome’s lower lip; but it feels almost ridiculously good, and Chromedome finds his engine purring as he melts into it.  One of his hands reaches up to cradle the back of Rewind’s neck.  On instinct, his injectors tingle with a sudden flood of electricity, preparing to extend, but he stills them deliberately.  Rewind’s hands are softly stroking over his cheeks, and Chromedome loses himself in the touch.

When they finally pull apart, Rewind has a huge, bright grin on his face.  Chromedome has _heard_ Rewind smile before, or _sensed_ him smile – Rewind’s body beams and his whole EM field lights up when he’s happy.  But this is the first time Chromedome has actually _seen_ Rewind smile.

And it feels like coming home.


End file.
